Transformative Spaceshttps://transformativespaces.org
On creating liberation spaces and lifting up voices for change.
Mon, 19 Nov 2018 03:48:55 +0000 en
hourly
1 http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/51372e1656ccaa22677e5930f8523cbb?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngTransformative Spaceshttps://transformativespaces.org
On the Last Day of Black History Month, Chicago’s School Board Votes to Shutter Five Black Schoolshttps://transformativespaces.org/2018/03/01/on-the-last-day-of-black-history-month-chicagos-school-board-votes-to-shutter-five-black-schools/
Thu, 01 Mar 2018 00:35:35 +0000http://transformativespaces.org/?p=6088Black students lead today’s march to City Hall. (Photo: Ervin Lopez)

Chicago saw another tumultuous episode in the city’s battle over public education on Wednesday, with a sadly familiar script. As many expected, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked, un-elected school board voted unanimously to close four predominantly Black high schools, despite the impassioned pleas and organizing of students and local residents. Four of the schools — Hope, Harper, Team Englewood and Robeson — are the last remaining neighborhood schools in the community of Englewood, a neighborhood Chicago officialshave long failed on a number of levels. National Teachers Academy elementary school (NTA) also faces closure, despite significant community protest.

In a move that the Chicago Teachers Union describes as adding “insult to injury,” the controversial vote was held on the last day of Black History Month.

Right now downtown, CPS higher ups are voting on whether to close 4 predominantly black & brown schools on the southside. This mirrors the ineffective and unfair closing of 50+ schools by Rahm Emmanuel in 2013. WHY OUR KIDS EVERY TIME? #cpsboardpic.twitter.com/gUUSmrETpU

Emanuel’s tenure as mayor has been marked by apattern of disinvestment in Black neighborhoods, in addition tomuch-publicized scandals about the murder and abuse of Black people at the hands of Chicago police. In a move that inspired mass protest, Emanuel’s school board closed 50 schools in 2013. Teachers, students and area residents argued that the 2013 closures would be deeply injurious to their communities, but the city proceeded with its plans, and as of January 2017,40 of those school buildings remained vacant. In a move that further emphasized the prioritization of Chicago’s infamously violent, racist police force, empty schools have also been used for training purposes by Cook County police officers.There is perhaps no clearer representation of Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago than teams of police, practicing assault tactics in neighborhood schools that have been forcibly emptied of their students.

By consistently thwarting efforts to establish an elected school board — with the help of elected officials like Alderman Joe Moore of the 49th Ward — Emanuel has provided his un-elected school board with the political insulation they’ve needed to close schools and silence dissent. The Illinois House of Representatives has twice voted to end Emanuel’s stranglehold on the school district and provide for an elected, representative school board in Chicago. But Emanuel, a champion of privatization and longtime enemy of the Chicago Teachers Union, has been unwavering in his opposition to any such democratic process.

On Wednesday, students representing the four Englewood high schools and NTA presented a united front as they protested and spoke out in the lobby of CPS headquarters and at City Hall. The students sat in at Chicago Public School (CPS) headquarters, danced, led chants, and shared personal narratives before marching to city hall. In the words of local organizer Benji Hart, “They did not play any of CPS or the city council’s games, but focused on their own message that all schools in all communities need to be well-staffed and supported.”

Hart attended Wednesday’s events as a representative of the #NoCopAcademy campaign — a community effort that aims to stop the construction of a new police academy in the West Garfield Park neighborhood. The police academy would cost the city $95 million. Given the austerity measures that Emanuel has imposed during his tenure, including the closure of half of Chicago’s publicly-funded mental health clinics, many residents are incensed by the proposed price tag of the facility. Hart was able to lead a brief teach-in during the morning sit-in at CPS headquarters.

“Young people were already well-aware of the city’s plan to build a $95 million cop academy in Garfield Park,” Hart told me in an interview,” saying students “understood the direct implications of a major investment in policing, coupled with a massive divestment from schools.” Community members who spoke at the sit-in noted that 40 percent of the city’s budget is already usurped by policing, and also highlighted how much settlements for police brutality have cost the city annually. “’Don’t pay us after you kill us,’ they demanded,” said Hart. According to Hart, the crowd’s overall demand was clear: “Take the money from the police budget and put it into our schools and communities now.”

Some of the expenditures students suggested in lieu of a new police academy were community centers, after school programs, jobs, health care, and fresh food.

Organizer Rachel Williams, who graduated from John Hope College Prep in 2009, believes that the system intentionally starves Black communities. Williams says officials know that to fully fund Black communities “[m]eans that the prison industrial complex becomes obsolete. It means community autonomy.”

For their part, the Chicago Teachers Union is asking supporters to push Illinois state senators to take action, arguing that the state Senate “[m]ust finally see reason and join the House in granting the largest school district in the state the same democratic rights enjoyed by virtually every other district.” They are asking residents to write their state senators to express their support for an elected school board in Chicago.

Author’s note: I am writing this for myself, to ensure that I remember. I am writing this for my family, when they can bear to read it, and for my father, whose eulogy I gave but only vaguely remember. I am writing this because I love words, and always seek comfort in them. I hope these words will be of use to others, but in the absence of such hope, I would still write them.

When our loved ones make their final departures, our minds fill up with “last times.” Our most recent memories of sharing meals, of arguing, or laughing at the same joke, all become last times. I had to cancel my last breakfast date with my parents because an old spinal injury was flaring up. If I had known I would be losing my father within the month, I would have gone no matter what. But the “last time” we had plans, I cancelled, because I didn’t feel well, and had a lot going on.

There were some good last times as well, and others that tore me apart. But each one was wholly necessary.

The Long Phone Call

Two months before I lost my father, we had a long talk on the phone. It wasn’t the last time we talked on the phone, but we did talk for over an hour and a half that day. Our chats were never brief, but even for us, that was a long call. I wondered afterwards why I had stayed on the phone so long. My father hadn’t been intent on doing so. My mother had just casually handed him the phone, after I called to check in with her, as she sometimes would.

I feel like, somewhere inside, some part of me knew that a crisis was coming, and that we needed to hear each other.

I talked to him about my job, about my organizing and the Medicare for All campaign. It was something I was working on at the time and something my father felt strongly about. He took care of my disabled mother, and knew that they would always carry medical debt. My parents managed, over the years, but they also watched loved ones forgo advanced treatments for major illnesses, embracing death, rather than putting their families in debt. They witnessed a life-deciding ratio at work: likelihood of success vs financial burden. And they watched people die as a result.

I know my dad was proud of me for working on the issue.

I talked with him about the last event I had organized. It was a vigil to save the ACA, and for all victims of medical neglect. I told my father all about it, in much greater detail than I normally would. He supported my work, but wasn’t heavily involved, as we had different visions. He had raised me to have a militant personality, but didn’t expect it to be directed at authority. Protest blockades made him uncomfortable, to say the least, and I know he was irritated when we shut down the mouth of the Eisenhower expressway in downtown Chicago. But he actually seemed quite glad when he heard that we used it as an opportunity to help get abuse survivor Naomi Freeman out of jail. My dad believed in self defense, and preemptive self defense, and he felt strongly that Naomi and others in her position should be freed — and in some cases, commended. He always thought that, and I always respected it. Now, advocating for criminalized abuse survivors is a big part of my work, just in a bigger, more radical way than my father would have imagined when he taught me to protect myself and others.

During that long phone call, I explained what I thought was most important about the health care vigil I had organized. The speeches were compelling and Atena Danner’s song was incredible, but there was also a moment in the event when people talked to strangers, and made specific commitments to the cause. I told him I’d learned how important it was to organize those moments, where people shared their thoughts with strangers. It’s so easy for people to become regular protest attendees, I explained, who come to events all the time, but never develop relationships. Organizing is about relationships and it has to involve affirmations of belief and commitment. It’s such a simple principle, but is often neglected. I saw it so clearly that day, and felt good about it. It was just one event, I told him, but it was part of a larger webwork of organizing, a mobilizing of heroic communities. Later, my mom showed him a Facebook video of my speech.

He got to hear about all the work that was happening to make something he believed in a reality, and he got a glimpse of my little part in it all. He also got to see the Republicans’ most recent attempt to repeal the ACA fail in a spectacular fashion. While that fight is once again at a critical stage, I’m glad he was able to witness that hopeful victory.

When Things Were Hopeful

The next big conversation we had was the last day I saw him fully awake. Within days, he had started to make a comeback from the stroke. He had been moved to a rehabilitation ward. After only one session of speech therapy, he sounded like himself again. His early physical therapy sessions went well. If anything, the staff told us, he was a little too eager. But he was going to do great, they said. He was smiling toward the end of our visit. He let us take a photo of him with a plush cat I brought him, and he took a silly selfie with my sister, in which he held up the plush cat and made a noise like it was hissing. I told him we should go to Devil’s Lake, when he was feeling better, to see the leaves change. He always loved the woods.

He was so happy to see my sister and I. He asked me about casual things. Was I having my Halloween party this year? Yes. (My father loved Halloween.) How was work? It was great. (My father loved that I had a union job, and that I was writing professionally.) He asked about my partner. Things were great, I told him, and Charlie was doing well. How was my bad back? I was making progress, with more physical therapy ahead. Still in pain, but not nearly as much, and I was optimistic.

It was all true. For months I had been thinking, if my back would just heal a bit, my life would be so on point. Sure, I would still live with the injustices we all live with, fight them, and take on everything that comes with that, but in my relationships, and my work, I felt right. My world has since spun off its axis, but I’m glad he knew things were good. Because there were times in my life when my father was afraid for me. Sometimes, those fears were warranted. I am grateful that he got to see me in a good place, for some time, with my biggest problem being dealt with.

I told a friend, artist Dan Bellini, that I don’t have a many recent photos with my father. Dan painted this watercolor for me to make up for that.

I am glad he knew that I’d be okay. And I’m so glad I have those memories of him, my sister and my mom, after the stroke, before things got worse. Everything happened so quickly, and when my mother said that my father had looked afraid, that two tears had rolled down his face, when he went into respiratory distress, I was inconsolable. I couldn’t stand the thought of him frightened in his last moments of awareness. I know that many people die afraid, both because death itself can be frightening, and because, like my dad, some people simply love life, despite all its shortcomings, and don’t want to leave the people they love, no matter what. I understand that position well.

At The End

I spent time with my dad after he was subdued by drugs. It had all happened very quickly. His brain was bleeding, and they wanted him still. Even then, for a while, there was hope. Until there wasn’t.

I was with him at the end. I talked almost the whole time, in those final hours, but I’ll never know if he heard me. When the stroke happened, during a routine procedure, he could have just slipped away. As much as it wrecks me to imagine him afraid, before the drugs kicked in, days later, as he was rushed to the ICU, I am grateful that I got to see him again, looking happy and hopeful. I’m also grateful that I got to hold his hand and reassure him as he was passing, because if there was any chance that he could hear me, he was going to hear my voice as he left us. I hope that, somehow, all those drugs managed to soothe him, while still allowing my voice to get through. I knew what to say, in those moments, and how to say it, because I knew him. He was my dad.

As my dad’s heart rate dropped, I talked about my childhood, the good times we’d had, the lessons he’d taught me and the big ideas we used to talk about. I was wrong, I told him, when I was younger, and he’d asked me if I thought people who were wholly good existed. At the time, I’d said yes, but I told him, as he was leaving us, that I had been wrong. No one was wholly good or wholly bad, because being a decent person isn’t a fixed condition. It’s a moment-to-moment decision. I’d learned that our “goodness” was just an ongoing project — a chain of decisions we’ve made, and continue to make, that define us at any point in time. We are both the sum and the moment. And by that measure, I told him, he was such a good person. He had done the right thing so often, and done so much good for others.

After recovering from his active addiction to alcohol when I was five, my father helped a number of others quit drinking. At his funeral I was hugged by a young woman whose family my father had helped. Anything we needed, she told me, anything we needed at all. My father had done so much for her husband, she said. My father had been a friend to her husband during difficult times. That kindness was repaid at the end of my father’s life. Her husband, who I now consider a friend, was at the hospital in those final days, looking out for my mom when my sister and I weren’t there. In my father’s final moments, the young man offered to leave. But I could feel how much my father had meant to him, and I could sense that this moment was, in a way, his too. He sat quietly as I spoke to my dad, comforting my mother as needed. She had said a great deal to my dad before I arrived, and was mostly making room for me to speak. I think she could tell I was ready to help see him out of this world. I was working hard to keep my voice just right, and to say all the right things. I think she wanted to let me get that right.

It’s hard for us to talk about those moments. We are both still prone to breakdowns and fits of tears. My sister is the tough one. My father knew that. He had talked with her, years ago, about how to start resolving his affairs, so she did exactly that. My father knew she could handle it, because he knew her. She was his daughter.

As hard as it was, I know it was a gift to be with him in those last hours. I know I said everything he would have wanted. I knew I could keep my composure, for his sake, and I did. I knew I could make sure he heard the words my sister would have said, if she had gotten there in time, which she did not. She had further to travel than I did, and got stuck in the morning rush. But because I was with my dad, I got to comfort her when she arrived, telling her that I knew I told him what he needed to hear us say. Then I got to fall apart and be rescued by my sister, who held me and told me, “I’ll handle everything else.”

The Missing Piece

My last conversation with my father wasn’t real in any physical sense. He was gone, and I was being ripped apart inside. One of the only people — perhaps the only person — who could see me through this kind of pain was never going to call again. We would never go out for breakfast again and swap stories about our lives. I would never get to hear him laugh again. So, I thought, if he’s the only person who could make me feel better, maybe I need to think about what he would say. After all, I knew him. He was my dad.

I couldn’t bear to imagine him talking to me about his own absence, so I at first imagined what he would say to someone in my position, like the adult child of a friend of his who’d passed away. I could see it clearly in my mind. The table they were sitting at. The sound of their voices. It was all pretty easy to picture. Then I imagined someone my age, who had lost their dad, who was, for the sake of this thought exercise, very much like my own father, or rather, exactly like him. I imagined this emotional stand-in laying their heart at my father’s feet, talking about the suddenness of it all, and how their father deserved more time. I imagined what my dad would say.

He would say that was all true, and that it wasn’t fair, but that this young person’s father had a good life, never suffered a long illness, and had his family with him at the end. He would say that, even though his friend deserved more time, he’d had a full life.

I imagined the young person asking my father about his dad being frightened before he was intubated and given a massive cocktail of drugs — about being afraid that the last thing he was aware of was fear. To this, I had no doubt of my father’s response. I could hear it in my mind quite clearly, word-by-word:

“Well, he’s not afraid now,” my father would say gently. “That happened,” he would acknowledge, “and then it was over.” My father could say things with a gentle finality that somehow took the edge off, grounding you in a new place, with a new truth, that you simply hadn’t been willing to rest in. “He didn’t want to go,” my father would acknowledge, “but his life was not his death. His life was good, and you don’t know that he couldn’t hear you at the end. They say that people can hear you when they’re in that state. I don’t know, but if he could hear anything, it was you and your mother being there. That’s something. Something a lot of people don’t have.” He would tell this young person that even when their father was afraid, their mother was there to comfort them. He wasn’t alone. He was comforted by his wife of over four decades, whose devotion to him had never wavered. “And I really wouldn’t assume he couldn’t hear you,” he would say. “But either way,” he would conclude, “he knew you loved him, and he was proud of you.”

My father would have said all of that very slowly, checking his own emotions along the way, and confiding in someone else later. I felt sure of all of this, but I still couldn’t let myself imagine my father saying these things to me, in first person. But what I could imagine saying to him, directly, and wanted to say, was that I was so proud of him, as a person, and that so many people felt they knew him, through me and my work. That all his friends loved him, but that his life reached so much further than all of that, into my sister’s work as a nurse, into my work as a writer and a street organizer. And I knew what he would say.

He would say he was always proud of us, and he would probably apologize for mistakes I forgave decades ago. I would tell him there was nothing to forgive anymore. I would tell him that I was going to be okay, and do good things for people. He would say that he knew that I would. He would tell me to take care of my mother and my sister, and I would tell him I would.

He would tell me to be careful and take care of myself, and to always tell people I love them if I really feel that way. Because things change quickly, and that’s the only thing that stays the same. He would tell me it all goes by fast, and that you can’t just talk about doing things. You have to do them. But that’s a lesson I learned from him a long time ago. I’ve tried to live it, and I’ve tried, like he taught me, to learn from missteps without punishing myself. I wish I had seen him more, but if I told him that, he would remind me that I couldn’t of known what was coming, just as he couldn’t have known. He would tell me that seeing me, that day, when I brought him that plush cat, and he took one last selfie with my sister, was a gift to us to us all, and that I should hold onto that.

We buried him with that plush cat and his favorite book. My sister also left a dreamcatcher in his casket, to honor his heritage and ensure he dreamt well.

I know there’s nothing unique about talking to people who’ve left us. But it’s pretty new to me. The sky hangs lower for me with him gone. I know eventually, other things and other people will help hold it high again, but I am not the same. My life, my whole family’s lives, have another before and after, and I am not sure who I am on the other side. I am not sure how to be who I was without him in the world. But I will do my best. I promised my dad I would, whether he could hear me or not, and I would do anything for my dad.

Author’s note part II: My mother is chronically ill and disabled. Within days, she lost her beloved husband, her primary caregiver and her medical insurance. If you would like to help sustain her life-giving care while we sort this out, you can do so here.

Attendees shake hands and share ideas at a health care vigil in Chicago on June 27, 2017. (Photo: Jim Pearson)

Dear fellow lefties,

Like many of you, I spent most of Saturday shaking and grieving. For those involved with movement work, who have watched motorists menace and even strike protesters in the past, these events were not wholly surprising, but one doesn’t need to be surprised by a blow to be injured by it. The violence of white supremacy is always with us, but this weekend, those who would kill us if they could sought to show us that they can. They created a spectacle of hatred and violence to make themselves known and felt. And I know the next time a march veers off a sidewalk in my city, the image of those brave people, being thrown through the air, after being struck by a murderer’s vehicle, will be very much with us.

Everyone’s searching for something to do in this moment — links to share, a protest to attend, support to offer — and all of that work is very important, but as we carry out these very basic acts of solidarity, I would argue that a much larger task awaits — one that has long been ignored by most.

We have to get our shit together.

We must support those who were harmed yesterday, but the next order of business HAS TO BE bridging some of the divides we’ve allowed to form between us. I’m not saying we have to forgive every transgression, but we need some kind of lefty armistice between us if we want to fight our most pressing enemy. We have a lot of wounds to heal, and if we’re going to act in solidarity together against what’s trying to kill us, we need to figure out what can be healed, and what can be patched over for the time being, as unpleasant as merely patching a thing may sound.

You know that scene in the movie where someone says, “As soon as this is over [insert threat]”? There’s a reason they aren’t settling their differences on the spot.

I have said it before, and I will say it forever: United fronts aren’t about unity. They’re about survival. And if we could table some of our angst for the sake of survival, we might just overcome some of our differences in the process — or not, but you know what? Living to fight another day matters.

Social media posturing is hurting us. Critique-as-activism is hurting us. An unwillingness to lock arms with people who piss us off is hurting us.

Not everything we do in this moment will be revolutionary. Not everyone we build with will have their shit together. I am not saying we have to full-time hold our tongues, but if we continue to vote people off the island over every fuckup or personal beef, I fear for us. I’ve watched leftist communities get smaller and smaller, and the connections between them dwindle, as every conflict becomes a condemnation. We no longer accept that we are just people, flawed in everything we do. We no longer acknowledge that we, ourselves, have been vehicles of harm and oppression. “Organizing” has become a weeding out process, when it’s supposed to be about building relationships.

A shrinking community is not going to overthrow anything.

In our current, fractured state, we are wholly unprepared to protect and defend one another. The battle lines are everywhere, when they should be squarely in front of us — between us and the fascists who would destroy us.

To be clear: I’m not here for scapegoating “identity politics.” Has the language of social justice been weaponized inappropriately? We all know it has, but that doesn’t mean that conversations about identity and intersectional struggle aren’t wholly necessary. Any necessary idea can be taken to an unproductive extreme. Call-outs sometimes have to happen, because harm needs to be interrupted, but they should not be our default response. Because if we disavow everyone who doesn’t get it, we will have a pretty small army — and those who remain will still be ripped apart by grudges, rumors and unforgiving attitudes.

So many people and groups have been disempowered by the clubhouse politics of leftist movement spaces.

And liberals, you all are some of the worst movement critics of all. Harping about “purity politics” when yours is just another form of “purity.” If yesterday didn’t teach you to stop busting out your critiques of antifa, BLM, window-breakers and monkey-wrenchers, you need to spend some time on yourself. If you think those people are your enemies, or where your critique ought to fall in this moment, you have a lot of confusion to overcome. You are doing a lot of harm, both to individuals and to the possibility of a united front, every time you take aim at resistors. And when you vilify us, you validate the violence inflicted upon us by the state and others. So stop. We are not the problem. We did not put this man in office. We are fighting for our survival against a force that is clearly bent on killing us. Standing on the sidelines, acting as a critic in those moments is not a good look.

I am not trying to give out hall passes here. I want people to be held accountable. But I want us to find language and ways to hold each other accountable while still trying to get work done. I want answers other than voting people off the island. I want people who say they believe in transformative justice to do more than gossip about the organizers who’ve offended them. Whether that means having coffee with someone, to talk through the things that haven’t felt right, or creating intentional spaces for larger dialogues, it’s work that has to happen. Healing and building are where the bulk of our energies belong right now, because getting our shit together is a task more important than any one action, and in this moment, I am terrified of what failure looks like.

As the Senate’s “Better Care Reconciliation Act” finally came undone on Monday, another scheme to undermine health care access was hastily embraced by both Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. In the wake of Trumpcare’s latest setback, both Trump and McConnell indicated that they now supported a simplified but equally ominous goal: a repeal and delay strategy that would allow the GOP to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), with a two year window to hatch a replacement.

Given that every version of Trumpcare has been an attack on the vulnerable, this repeal and replace effort was an obvious effort to create a greater health care crisis that would allow Republicans to portray themselves as saviors when they finally passed a new bill. The GOP has thus far adopted a strategy of claiming that the country was already faced with a health care crisis, due to the failings of the ACA, but given that the GOP’s bill would have exponentially worsened conditions for just about every vulnerable community in the United States, the idea of righting the ship by causing it to sink it has, to say the least, failed to gain the approval of most Americans.

Given the authoritarian nature of the Republican project in Washington DC — unpopular policy decisions, a disregard for longstanding rules of government, and consistent efforts to interfere with voter participation — the bill’s low approval rating was a surmountable impediment for Republicans. Due to Trump’s low approval rating, the GOP’s political strategists can only gain ground if they are not bound by popular opinion, or the Republican party will accomplish none of its aims.

So how did we win this round? There are a number of factors to examine there, and some of them are more encouraging than others.

First of all, I want to highlight efforts that will be largely overlooked by Democratic senators who take credit for this win: The efforts of the disabled and the chronically ill. On the protest and direct action front, this fight was largely led by disabled people and the chronically ill — andlet’s invest in their work accordingly. Those most impacted by the failings of health care in the United States fought to maintain what they have, and to uplift the vision that far exceeds anything the Democrats have offered: a vision of Medicare for All. As is usually the case, those most threatened have had the most to teach us about what’s at stake, and in this fight, they have been making their voices heard. We all owe these communities a great debt.As a disabled person myself, who has organized against this bill, I am grateful for whatever small part I was able to play, and to those who have helped me contribute. That’s another piece of this: Whatever the struggle, we must all do our best to support and amplify those who can speak to their lived experiences of an issue. Every idea I have had, and every moment I have contributed to, would not have happened without able-bodied allies and accomplices. Remember, if you don’t show up for the communities you care about, you are leaving them in the cold to fight alone. None of us can afford to do that now, so don’t.

Another edge we had in this fight is that a number of people realized that every tactic in play was important. Too often, people who embrace different areas of work, like direct action, or electoral efforts, tend to dismiss the value of other tactics. In fights like this, phone calls matter, just as sit-ins matter, just as faxes and town halls and public confrontations matter. Training efforts matter. Cross-movement coalition building matters. Remember what worked here, and be sure to take notes. Strategies aren’t born, they are built. Take what you can to build for the next round, because there’s going to be one, on some crucial front, very soon.

And let’s all remember that this isn’t over. We can take a breath, and we have every reason to celebrate, but there will be another Trumpcare. Like zombies, Republican efforts to destroy us will rise from the dead, and march forward again. They are waging a social war against us, and it’s not about to end any time soon. So we need to strategize, and kill the zombie in front of us. Because we will be fighting off Republican attacks on our values and our lives for some time.

And for the record, that is what real resistance looks like: a community that builds relationships and numbers, that uses its creativity to outmaneuver the enemy. Real resistance is not a Democratic fundraising pitch: It’s a relentless effort to defend our communities and our lives. Make no mistake: Their attacks will be unwavering, and while a politically outgunned resistance just shoved Goliath on his ass, we will want a lot more fists in the fight moving forward.

But building numbers isn’t enough. We need a movement that doesn’t meet Trumpcare with calls for compromise, but with calls for Medicaid for all. When they say reform, we say freedom. When they say, “let’s negotiate,” we disrupt. There is no middle ground between good and evil that we can afford to settle for. And that means it’s time to unapologetically polarize this country. Because we are living in the crosshairs of a party that has seized the federal government, and we cannot allow them to wound, cage and kill us. Fortunately, this is another one of those moments that has reminded us that we can take them on — and we can win. To everyone who’s answered the call to fight for the vulnerable, and fight for your own futures, I thank you. To anyone who’s getting ready to join the fight: There will never be a moment as right as this one. Raise a glass to the resistors, my friends. And let’s hold the line.

]]>https://transformativespaces.org/2017/07/18/remember-gop-health-care-bills-are-like-zombies-they-keep-coming-back/feed/1bullhorngirl19577472_1585819748118729_8982681388206494798_oYou Don’t Have to Wave A Flag To Enjoy A Cookouthttps://transformativespaces.org/2017/07/04/you-dont-have-to-wave-a-flag-to-enjoy-a-cookout/
Tue, 04 Jul 2017 16:15:57 +0000http://transformativespaces.org/?p=5432I believe in co-opting the holidays of the oppressor. I’m about celebrating resistance and the people we resist alongside. Cookouts are great and so is the company of my loved ones. We deserve joy in our lives, but the themes we indulge matter, because they are part of a larger culture.

On this day, I would like to lovingly remind my friends, who hold beliefs similar to my own, that indulging in patriotism, to any extent, amounts to drinking poison, or unleashing poison in the direction of another, or both. When you consume the mythology of American greatness, in any quantity, you are romanticizing slavery and genocide in the same way that “Gone with the Wind” erased bondage, by wrapping it up in a romance novel.

This poison has kept Americans stagnant for many years. It justifies greed, theft, and nearly every violation of human rights that we claim to oppose in the world. It is a cult of death, and to renounce your membership is a step toward freedom. The pursuit of freedom, as a physical reality, ultimately requires us to envision freedom, which in my experience, is a journey that can take decades. That is not to say that it cannot happen for some in an instant, but it must involve a separation of self from that which has silenced broad sections of our imaginations, and taught us to privilege the self above all else — a brilliant way to deprive people of collective power, while making them feel privileged to pursue individual aims.

My stumbling block was rage — which has value in its own right, but is often a hiding place for more difficult emotions. For others, it can be the abandonment of this society’s ideological comforts. But like any drug, used to numb the sensations of oppression, it chips away at our insides.

Many of our oppressions are enforced on pain of violence, but some are self-monitored. We are expected to internalize the supposed beliefs our “founding fathers,” who are no more your fathers than they are mine. They are fathers of deception, genocide, slavery and death. We must divorce ourselves from their idealization in order to develop our visions of freedom.

We can find community before we fully accomplish such aims, and community is a component of movements, as is action, but one cannot build a liberative framework while clinging to any idealization of a system that oppresses. Culture building is work we cannot contribute to, in a revolutionary manner, while the state still has our heartstrings within reach.

Cut those strings.

Tell the truth.

Tell people what they don’t want to hear about the history of slavery and genocide, and about the current incarnations of these crimes.

Tell people about the lies their history teachers told them, and the suffering erased by their favorite news sources.

Tell people that, any interaction with this system, in the pursuit of liberation, should involve taking power away from our oppressors, rather than affording them more.

Tell people that there is no honorable death in the service of this government. There is only death, which often occurs within the context of crimes designed by others.

It is tempting to allow those locked into a cycle of grief to idealize such “service,” but by doing so, we internalize the lies of the state, and perpetuate those crimes in a way that enables murder on a global scale, and the deaths of more Americans who believe in the lies of patriotism.

Fuck being a patriot. Tell the truth of this moment, and find the truth of a better one. That’s what celebrating independence should mean, not in the sense of things past, but in the hope of a better future — one where we all get free.

]]>bullhorngirlsnow whiteThis is a Piece I Would Write About How to Fight Trumpcare, If I Were Well Enoughhttps://transformativespaces.org/2017/06/26/this-is-a-piece-i-would-write-about-health-care-if-i-were-well-enough/
Mon, 26 Jun 2017 20:17:30 +0000http://transformativespaces.org/?p=5353

This is a piece I would write about health care, and how we can all fight Trumpcare, if I were well enough to do so. Those of you who know my work know that when my body fails me, I often turn to words, but today, as I try to organize against this bill, I find even words are a struggle, because I have so little strength.To those who don’t know me or my situation, I think you’ll find my story familiar: Even with insurance, I have fought like hell for what care I’ve received, and it hasn’t been enough. My friends have crowd sourced care that should have been covered, and I face major delays in procedures that could help restore at least some of my mobility.

Amid my organizing efforts, and my desire to spout words of a defiance, I am frightened and deeply concerned, not only by the bill’s contents, but also by the inadequate opposition Trumpcare has been met with. It seems this bill, and all its horrors, have faded into a background of horrors in the American psyche. That is a state of affairs that could likewise spell death for some of the most vulnerable among us, and I find that absolutely chilling.

If I could manage it, this would be another battlecry piece, filled with words I might yell through a bullhorn, if I could get my body into the streets, every day, as I feel this cause demands. But instead, I am writing this from bed, where I’ve spent the whole day, to tell you that I need your help. We the disabled, and other people who will be ground under by this bill — including Medicaid recipients, who will see their benefits gutted over time — need you. We only have three days. That’s not a long time to commit your attention, so please do so. We have so many battles ahead, but this historically unprecedented attack on the US social safety net will do irrevocable damage to the lives of millions, and potentially shift the entire course of history against marginalized people in the US, in a way we have not yet seen in our lifetimes.

This piece is already longer than I thought it would be, as I expected to simply offer you a blank space, in brackets, that I would ask you to fill in your own spaces, on your own pages, in your own words, in talks with your senators, in the streets and in private conversations, with words taken from others, if necessary. But I feel so strongly, and so deeply worried, that I couldn’t help but pen a plea as well.

As many of us have warned since the onset of Trumpism, they are coming for your neighbors. This is just one manifestation of a march to a much more terrifying place. As many of you know, Trump’s Muslim ban was partially reinstated on Monday. After a long string of failures, Trump’s agenda has found a second wind, and so must our movements. But for now, I am asking: Please act in solidarity, in whatever way you can, for the next few days. Your love and rage over the next three days could mean the world, and your anger after the fact won’t save anyone.

Your disabled friends, and so many others, need your hearts and hands this week. Our lives and ability to live them depend on a broad network of solidarity, because we cannot do this without you. So please hold onto your values in this moment, and defend them, and us, with everything you have.

To those who are already doing all they can, I thank you, and I hope to hug you on the other side of this, and celebrate a much-needed victory against ableism and authoritarianism.

Author’s note: If you live in Chicago, please join us tomorrow in Daley Plaza for a vigil for victims of health care neglect, past, present and future. I wasn’t up for organizing this, but I am doing it anyway, because I feel the moment demands it, and I will deeply appreciate anyone else who extends themselves by attending, in spite of any obstacles they might face.

Today I am joining the #womensstrike. I have seen a lot of talk lately about how choosing to join the strike is a privileged decision. In my case, that’s true. I will not be penalized for missing a day’s work, because my publication’s leadership chose to support those who wanted to join the strike. To make a long story short, my workplace would not have the character that informed the decision to support us if our publication had not unionized in 2009. Truthout was actually the first online-only publication to unionize, and even though I didn’t work there at the time, I have always felt a bit of pride around that.

But to get back to privilege: Activism is expensive, and committed people give what they can. When I was only bringing in my intern’s stipend from Truthout, while also organizing full-time, losing any amount of pay would have been injurious, to say the least. But I still spent way too much money than I could afford to on activism, as many of us do. Now, as a full staff member, I worry less about my finances, and I have more flexibility in running off to do movement work. I also have access to insurance through my job. I’m a union member, which means I have some rights that everyone ought to have. A lot of people like me, who won’t endure any punitive impact for participating today, will do so, and will do what they can to advocate for women. Many others will be taking a legitimate risk or financial hit to participate.

I’m in favor of accessibility in our work, but if we are critiquing people for withholding their labor, we are straight up off the rails.

Is the #womensstrike an effective maneuver? That’s an entirely separate debate, but I would argue that if it builds solidarity and people continue to learn new lessons about organizing, then it will be a victory. If it makes a cultural impact, in terms of a rising resistance, it will be a victory. If it inches people a little closer to radicalization, that’s a victory.

I can’t tell you with certainty what will create the necessary momentum to defeat fascism, but I can tell you what won’t: a circular firing squad of movement critics.

Entering awkward and mismatched organizing situations is part of the work. And to be clear, I know there are many people who will be participating today whose politics will never align with mine. I am willing to negotiate with that, to varying extents, to mitigate the catastrophes ahead. My conscience is demanding as much, even as I, at times, continue to struggle with such tasks.

Could this or any project not pan out as hoped? Of course. That’s always possible. When you stop thinking such things are possible, you’re probably on your way to a colossal fuck up. And let’s remember, no one ever won anything without trying.

Remember, none of us are movement managers. We are organizers, whose work is building community, culture and action around the possibility of a different way of life. This does involve social critique, but it also involves a different immediate intention than that of a culture critic.

If you do critique, realize, from jump, that you may be underestimating the work itself or the complexity of the situation. How many times have you been involved with something that had all sorts of angles — stories that deserved to be understood in their own right? This is definitely the case with the #womensstrike, an issue that has been well addressed by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.

But let’s assume for a moment that you’re in a situation where you’re dead right about someone’s tactic or strategy being flawed. You are still not a mass movement manager. Because your work is in front of you, and your power and creativity are needed front and center. You simply cannot micromanage a mass movement. Because if it’s small enough for you to keep the whole of it consistent with your politics, in this political climate, it’s too small.

So what can we do to work our way out of our silos?

First, we have to get over our startle responses to people not doing everything as we would do it. All of us. This is about obstructing what could be the swift end of the world, and what will, at the very least, claim many lives through neglect and abuse in the United States, and through militant violence, climate change and willful deprivation elsewhere. I could argue that privilege is flexing critique all day, and describing the water while people are drowning, but I won’t, because at this point, I have come to agree with Mariame Kaba about the utility of the word “privilege.” When a word means everything, it means nothing, and when “privilege” means that going on strike is a crime against those who can’t, I’m not sure I have any further use for it.

Of course, none of this even begins to address how out of touch with history these critiques are. I wonder if these people would have condemned the strikes and boycotts of the last century — actions that are well celebrated in the history books and in movement spaces today, despite the fact that they centered the participation of those who could enact a particular tactic. I wonder if these people have even read such histories, including the history of International Women’s Day. Do the people launching angry think pieces about the strike understand that this day is rooted in a labor strike? If not, I recommend checking out Zoé Samudzi’s thoughts on the subject, but don’t expect the indulgence of any followup questions, because Samudzi has opted to join today’s strike by refraining from unpaid intellectual labor.

Yes, that’s right, there are ways to become involved with today’s strike without skipping a day of paid work. The idea that gendered work is uncompensated in many forms is one that is being addressed today by numerous participants. If you didn’t know that, there is probably also a spectrum of politics involved with this strike event that you may be unaware of (hint: it’s not just about the people who planned the Women’s March).

Can we spend more time exploring and learning than we do critiquing? Because the left is the only land I know of where people actually think that picking apart every emerging project will somehow lead to the emergence of an adequate project.

Ask yourself, what are you building? What are you healing? The vast majority of the time, if you can’t answer that question, you are misdirecting your energies.

An escalated culture of fugitive capture, and brutality, has emerged around immigrants. Police departments around the country, already rampant with abuse, have been given a hall pass to commit heinous acts of violence. Life-sustaining health care is being replaced with the expectation that workers save up to become catastrophically ill. The water of Black and Native communities is disproportionately tainted — and let’s just think about the fact that the word “disproportionate” is a necessary qualifier when discussing poisoned water in a country with as much wealth as the United States.

People are going to die because of Trump. Maybe millions of people. It’s springtime for fascism and the “resistance” is currently comprised of a bunch of leftists reenacting the last scene of Reservoir Dogs.

If we have any hope of halting Trumpism in its tracks, or even dulling its impacts, we as leftists will have to do the unthinkable: work in concert, despite our differences, and quarrel with the enemy more than we quarrel with each other.

]]>bullhorngirlstrikeOn Fascism, Poetry and Survivalhttps://transformativespaces.org/2017/02/13/on-fascism-poetry-and-survival/
https://transformativespaces.org/2017/02/13/on-fascism-poetry-and-survival/#commentsMon, 13 Feb 2017 03:15:35 +0000http://transformativespaces.org/?p=5134One of the things I love about this page is that it can become whatever it needs to be, or whatever I need it to be, on a given day. Tonight, I need it to be a wall I can chalk a poem on, before walking away. My thanks to those who read it.

Another Poem About Survival

Step backward, forward or aside as needed.
There were never any roadmaps.
Shelter yourself and others,
in fabric, between walls and with open arms.
There are days so dark that light must hide
itself,
its glow,
its motion,
to grow until its fully formed.

They exist amid memories and empty chairs,
but at times leave us to eat alone,
longing for the pitch of a friend, or lover
or father’s laughter,
or for the sound of anyone at all.

If your best-loved hopes have turned to vapor,
and risen away
from sight or reach,
or have even begun to linger
on the edge of memory,
remember:
Joy and pain, grief and pleasure,
will turn like wheels.
And on some unknowable day
The sky will reopen,
And water will return as rain.

There is a grief that precedes tragedy, when loss is on the horizon. But there are people whose work, by design, embraces loss. I wanted to lean on the words of one such person today, as we contemplate the uncertainty ahead. Heather is a mentally ill artist and a reiki practitioner. She is also a former sex worker and a death midwife. We have worked together and written together, and today, I am grateful to share one of her reflections.

One of my hospice patients is actively dying. When I arrived for my visit yesterday there was a chaplain with her, I think he was surprised that I was a hospice volunteer with my high heeled boots, faux fur coat, and bright red hair. But I dress up for these visits because the residents love sequins, glitter, fake fur. When I walk through the halls they pet me like a cat. And I think for those who have a hard time remembering, these things help keep me memorable. Janice does not remember me most of the time, but the first thing she always says to me is, “You have red hair.” I had touched up my hair that morning with this in mind.

In my hospice training and death midwife course I learned what the signs are that someone is actively dying. It is different to write these things down in a notebook than it is to experience them. I sit next to her and stroke her forehead, she is almost bald but what hair she still has is brushed to the side and fastened with a pin. Her head is feverish but her hands are cold and bruise-colored. I polished her nails around Halloween, some chipped blue still remains. She lays perfectly still and then intermittently trembles and balls her fists, surprisingly strong. There is a rattle in her throat that seems disconnected from her breathing. I wonder at all the involuntary things our bodies do, the struggle between that energy that has always been here will always be here and the vehicle where it is currently trapped.

I stay with her for as long as I can, passing the time by looking around her room. She has two roommates. One has some artwork with her name written in glitter on a shamrock. Her bedside dresser is covered in beanie babies, snow globes, and those ceramic figures of bonneted girls that were really popular around the time I was born. The other dresser is almost completely empty. There is an old black and white photo of a couple on their wedding day. People’s faces look different now. Men don’t have those heavy-lidded eyes, women don’t have those healthy round faces. Or maybe it’s just the black and white that makes them seem otherworldly. There is a cross hanging over her bed. I think about all of the things I have and imagine trying to decide which few things I would take with me if I had to go live in a room with two strangers against my will. I couldn’t imagine what I would bring, I couldn’t imagine that happening to me.

Then I remember it already happened when I was put in the mental hospital in 4th grade.

Maybe that’s why none of this is as upsetting to me as I feel like it should be.

As I am leaving I kiss her on the forehead knowing I may never see her again. I wish I could stay longer. I wish I had more time.

On my way out I run into a resident who is not one of my hospice patients but who likes to pet my clothes. She is wearing mittens which means she was probably trying to scratch one of the nurses. I’ve been warned to be careful around her because she bites. I love her.

“I remember you” she says. “I was there the day you were born,” she says and claps her hands together, the sound muffled by her mittens. I say goodbye and she keeps clapping. “I’ve been here forever,” she calls after me. “I’ve been here forever.”

]]>bullhorngirl13450951_10154168346742165_5406904072261949912_nA Pep Talk At The Edge of Extinctionhttps://transformativespaces.org/2016/12/31/hello-2017-a-pep-talk-at-the-edge-of-extinction/
Sat, 31 Dec 2016 17:31:14 +0000http://transformativespaces.org/?p=5039The shoreline of a campsite in Standing Rock, just before winter set in. (Photo: Johnny Dangers)

What does it mean to stand at the precipice of human failure — a failure so profound that it threatens to both tear humanity into oblivion, and drag all life on earth down with us? What does hope look like, in the face of such potential disaster, and what does it look like when all available math tells us that the disasters we all fear are already underway? With Trump about to take office, so many shades and shapes of human suffering feel inevitable, and anyone who is keeping up with the math of climate change is likely, and quite understandably, discouraged. So what does hope look like, as we step into a new year?

For me, it looks like my friends, huddled around fires in Standing Rock, surviving the bitterness of a North Dakota winter so that our people may live. It looks like hundreds of nations of our people, travelling thousands of miles, and in some cases, overcoming centuries old blood feuds, to stop a pipeline. Energy Transfer Partners promised those invested in the Dakota Access Pipeline by January 1, and there won’t be. That’s what what hope looks like, to me, as I ready myself to kick nearly everything else about this year to the curb.

In some ways, Native peoples and allies who are still holding it down in Standing Rock are representative of what marginalized people are experiencing around the country. After the election, we all felt a storm setting in, and while most of us aren’t literally laboring against the elements to sustain our bodies and resistance, many of us are huddling together for warmth, contemplating what it’s going to take to survive.

As we look forward, beyond the false fixes of a waning administration, toward the uncertain road ahead, I have no illusions about how ugly things might get, but I also have hope. During the last week, I witnessed on odd sort of backlash against hope on social media. When people would speak optimistically about the new year, they would often be met with the slingshot cynicism of people who are fixed in their own pessimism. People were actually insulting the intelligence and awareness of people for naming one of the most fundamental hopes we all experience with time: That maybe this year will be better than the last.

Is a hard rain gonna fall? Absolutely. Is the planet itself at stake, with climate change hurtling toward a point of no return, and (to put it mildly) a mercurial reality TV star in office? Yes. We are staring down mass deportations, escalating state violence (on all fronts, including the violence of mass incarceration), and the absolute edge of extinction, but here’s the thing: We are still here. We are still strong and creative, and many of us come from peoples who have survived what most can’t imagine. We have each other, and in our unity, in our resistance, there is always hope.

In the not-too-distant future, the hope that real resistance brings may be the only hope that matters. And I’m not talking about the hope that comes with sharing an important article, or the hope that knowing determined people can bring. I’m talking about the hope that comes with truly joining, or continuing to throw down, with the resistance, in whatever way we’re able.

As we stand on this precipice, faced with a climatic battle for all life — and for the very idea of freedom — we shouldn’t downplay what we’re up against. But it’s equally important that we not diminish ourselves. Every moment of our lives as oppressed people, and as organizers, and every moment of struggle since first contact, when the violence of colonialism reached our shores, has led to this one, just as this moment will lead to the next. And what comes next can only be predicted, and as 2016 has shown us, predictions do not define reality.

I do understand cynicism. For years, I draped myself in pessimism and skepticism, because it was easier than having hope. Being skeptical rarely blows up in one’s face. Hope, on the other hand, can fly high, full of promise, and then spiral to the ground in flames (amid the background noise of I-told-you-so’s).

Cynicism is emotionally stagnant, and therefore, emotionally safer, but it is also self fulfilling, and rarely yields anything beautiful.

I understand being deeply pessimistic about the prospect of grassroots resistance clashing with a militarized surveillance state. And I understand being convinced, due to the staggering math of climate change, that nothing we do now matters. I recognize people’s misgivings, but I also believe that humanity’s potential isn’t restricted to its shadow side. So much is possible, and it’s okay to be in love with possibility, and to fight for that love as though the whole world depends on it — because it does.

My work is sustained by love and hope, and I understand that, for some people, hope is a significant challenge. Sometimes, it is for me as well. Giving up and just living out this life of mine, as comfortably as I can manage, is a thought that’s flashed through my mind more than once this year, and honestly, that’s never happened before. From the moment I got involved in movement work, years ago, I have never doubted what I needed to be doing with my life. But this year, pain, longing and frustration have, at times, left me kicking around the notion of some simpler happiness — even on the edge of oblivion.

But that’s not what it’s going to take for all of us to make it through what’s coming, and it’s not who I want to be in this world, in my community, at this moment in history. I want to be who I am — a person living in rebellion against what’s killing and crushing us.

I resisted my aforementioned urges to hurl myself toward some easy out, and I know many others will as well. Because while hope can be difficult, nothing will change for the better without it, and we all know in our hearts that if we are to survive, everything must change. If it doesn’t, there’s nowhere to go but down. And standing on the edge of catastrophe, I want no part of that chasm.

But here’s the good news: Human potential runs in more than one direction. For all the complex harm we’ve caused, we remain creative. We remain defiant. What has been built by human hands can be dismantled by human hands, and there are beautiful examples, throughout history, of things we’ve built that are worth living and fighting for.

And as for what must be ended: There are failings and weaknesses embedded in the walls of this system, and as history has shown us, walls can fall down.

Hope is renewable, but if you don’t have it now, that’s okay. Just be sure to take the hand of someone who does. We can be here for each other, and together we can figure out what to hold onto, what to let go of, and what we needs to be torn apart. Together, we can figure out what to build, and how.

I won’t say I don’t find the new year daunting. I do. I have been very quick to tears lately and I can’t decide if it’s because I am mourning what I lost in 2016, or if I am somehow preemptively grieving the losses to come. Whatever it is, I know I need to vent it out before it morphs into despair — the best weapon of our enemies. And I know that, in spite of my tears, I will move forward, knowing that my hopes won’t always deliver, and that I will at times resent them for having failed me, but that they are nonetheless worth having. The truth is, hope can be a bitch, but saving ourselves, and each other, will take more determination than we could ever conjure without it.

So in these last words I write to you all, at the end of this wretched year, I want to say this:

We can make it, friends. But we aren’t going to save ourselves or the earth serendipitously. To survive, and to get free, we will have to carve out the will to believe in ourselves and in each other, and we will have to put one foot in front of the other.